Solution-Centred Hypnotherapy Helping you to make life better

As a fully qualified, professional hypnotherapist, I work in partnership with clients from a variety of backgrounds in and around York, treating a range of different conditions.

My approach entails gaining a detailed understanding of your individual circumstances and issues, helping you to identify appropriate and motivating goals, and then using my training and experience of a range of safe, tried and tested techniques to support you in moving forward to achieve lasting, positive change.

My practice is governed by the code of ethics of the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council and the General Hypnotherapy Register.

Thank you for taking the time to visit the site.

If you would like to make an appointment or you would like to find out how I can help you make life better, call or email. All calls and sessions are confidential.

FIONA McKEAND

Dip HSM, Dip AH GQHP - MASTER PRACTITIONER CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY

Additional Professional Training

Certificate in Hypnosis for Anger, Anxiety and Depression – International Certification Board of Clinical Hypnotherapy (US)

What is hypnotherapy and how can it help you? For an excellent guide to the research behind hypnosis and the issues it can help with, see Mark Tyrrell's short booklet here

Hypnosis is a naturally occurring state of relaxation and heightened awareness into which we enter many times each day, for example while absorbed in a task, daydreaming, reading a book or driving ‘on autopilot’. During this hypnotic state, both blood pressure and heart rate are lowered, brain wave patterns are altered, and you become highly responsive to positive suggestion.

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The relaxation alone produced by hypnosis, when done regularly, can improve immune system function, combat fatigue, and aid memory and learning. In fact, hypnosis has been used effectively for over two hundred years to treat a wide range of physical, emotional and behavioural issues.

Hypnotherapy treatment involves the induction of this hypnotic state in order to allow direct communication with the subconscious mind, which stores emotions, memories, internalised beliefs and is often programmed with unhealthy, inappropriate or limiting behaviour patterns. All too often, diet plans, willpower and conscious decisions to change do not produce lasting results because the subconscious mind is still holding on to these old patterns and beliefs. Lasting change requires the re-programming of the subconscious mind. When you are in hypnosis, it is possible to bypass the critical faculty of your analytical conscious mind and directly influence your subconscious mind to make fundamental changes and access resources that may have been forgotten, producing positive and permanent changes, often in a dramatic way. You respond to suggestions that are beneficial to you.

What is a session like?

A typical hypnotherapy session involves guided relaxation into hypnosis followed by positive suggestions or story-telling and metaphor, from which the highly suggestible subconscious mind picks up meaning and learns to apply new responses. Issues that may be deeply rooted in your past may be addressed through careful regression and analysis.

You are in complete control, however, because the conscious mind is always present, and you can choose to open your eyes and end the trance at any time you wish. Furthermore, it is impossible to ‘get stuck in hypnosis’; in the naturally occurring state, people either come out of the trance when something demands their conscious attention, or the relaxation deepens until they fall asleep. In a clinically-induced trance, you will be counted gradually out of the trance so that you emerge feeling refreshed, alert and ready to get on with the rest of the day.

Positive change is usually apparent after the first session and, unlike many other ‘talk’ therapies, hypnotherapy can produce lasting results in a short space of time.

Virtually anyone can be hypnotised and benefit from hypnotherapy. Despite popular myth, being able to go into trance is not linked to gullibility or low intelligence. On the contrary, people with high levels of intelligence, imagination and an open mind usually make the best candidates for hypnosis. Key factors, however, are positive expectations that change can occur and motivation to make those changes.

Hypnotherapy is recognised by the British Medical Association, the British Psychological Society and the American Medical Association and the US National Institute of Health.

I went to Fiona at the beginning of October 2015 after 15 years of smoking. My objective was to quit as my husband and me are willing to have a baby, but I felt I needed extra help to succeed in quitting the cigarette. I told Fiona I was afraid because the cigarette was associated with social life, pleasure and stress release in my mind. After the first session, I felt so strong and powerful and surprisingly, very happy! I’m sure Fiona managed to convinced my sub-conscious about the benefits of becoming a non-smoker… for life! 2 weeks later I had the second session as a re-enforcement. Just after this second session, I spent a whole week with family and my husband. I was the only non-smokers, but rather than dying for a cigarette, I felt so proud of myself, and so sad for my loved ones. Now I am used to my life as a non-smoker, and honestly I feel FREE, and this makes me smile everyday! I never thought it would have been so easy to end my relationship with the cigarette. If I knew it, I definitely would have seen Fiona a lot earlier. Thanks for everything Fiona